


The Ideal Conditions

by musamihi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-27
Updated: 2012-07-27
Packaged: 2017-11-10 21:13:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/470747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/pseuds/musamihi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A minefield of false starts, Molly's relationship with Greg seems finally to have settled into something almost normal after Sherlock dives headfirst off a rooftop – and that's good, because it might be the only normal thing she has.  But when you're helping the world's only consulting detective sustain the fiction of his own death, <i>normal</i> never stays for long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ideal Conditions

Molly's brief and bizarre close call with Jim Moriarty had made her much more prompt to respond to the insipid stuff that cluttered up meowmix@msn.co.uk. An unfortunate relic from her early days at university, it was a stain she wished she could wash out of her internet rap sheet but which had wound up in too many friend's inboxes to delete entirely; it was all spam and newsletters from which she couldn't be bothered to unsubscribe smattered with an occasional note from one of six friends from medical school. Their little group of seven had been as close as any professional students ever really can be, having left family and the friends of the formative years behind at some other institution. They had managed to keep in touch online, and not much more.

One of them hadn't even managed that – not until recently. Molly had always read the emails the other six had sent back and forth (sometimes at unprofessional frequencies and hours) with pleasure, but her input had been limited largely to one-liners. Solitude had been different, back then. The effort to break it had almost always seemed more trouble than it was worth. Taking in a movie and clucking over it afterwards with a glass of wine was fun, but the logistics of how and when to get home and how much time she'd have to herself before bed had never been buried very deep beneath the gossip and the alcohol.

There was something, though, about realizing that one's only recent social connection had been using one in furtherance of attempted murder that made one want to get out a bit more – if only to improve one's average. So, after Jim, Molly had pushed herself and had found it easier than she'd expected to lead what she supposed was a normal social life: since coming out of her shell in May she'd arranged to meet her medical school cadre for drinks after work at least once or twice a month, and she hadn't yet been the first to leave. The company was soothing. And if she wasn't much more talkative than she'd ever been, she was more grateful now, happier just to sit and absorb the chatter of those whom she knew, who went around the world as themselves, without facades. 

Tonight was the first Doctors' Night Out in February, and the site was a dark little wine bar that was in no way convenient to the hospital. Two glasses in and Molly was floating pleasantly, cozy in the busy Friday crowd that obscured the doors and window and bar from view and made the place feel oddly larger than life. Against her better judgement she offered to buy the third round, and against their better judgement the four women remaining agreed. The room was too warm and they were sitting with their knees all smashed together under the table, and a third glass would push most of them into a moderately unpleasant Saturday morning, but the cold outside was insistent and wet and almost anything was preferable to making the trek home. Jumping into bed with a pair of thick socks and her cat was nothing but a pleasant vision for Molly, too far away from this place to take seriously in the moment. Why not make the best of the warmth she had now?

Budging through the tightly-packed patrons (and dedicating more concentration than was perhaps normal to staying steady on her feet, especially considering her boots were flat), Molly followed the currents of the room until the path of least resistance led her to a little patch of empty space at the bar quite near the door. The cold rushed in around her knees, pushing past her tights, and she wedged herself as far forward against the bar as she could to take shelter beside the more substantial man to her left. It was only after craning her neck in both directions to search – in vain – for someone willing to take her money that she realized she knew him, and that his stiff and distant expression meant that he was almost certainly trying to pretend he hadn't seen her. 

"Oh – hi," she half-shouted, her voice fighting with the strange acoustics of the empty space behind the bar. She was too tipsy, too pleased with her evening, and too fidgety to think she could get away with acting as though she hadn't noticed him. Who knew how long it would be before she had the drinks she'd come for?

Greg tipped his chin down to smile at her, a valiant attempt at cheerfulness that did little to alleviate the strain in his forehead. "Hey." He looked out of place, leaning with his back to the bar and a bottle of lager, its label shredded past recognition, twisting in his hands. "Nice to see you."

That wasn't the most encouraging entrée, but Molly wasn't sure you were supposed to expect much from a man you met alone at a bar. She'd never been very good at _encouraging_ , either. But she shifted her weight to her other foot and leaned her elbows on the bar and gave him an uncertain grin. "You too. It's been a little while – Christmas, I think? How are you?"

"Good. Thanks." He turned awkwardly, a labored attempt to face both her and the door. "Ah – keeping busy, are you? All right?"

"Oh. Sure, pretty busy." She let her eyes drift away and almost – almost! – made contact with the bartender. "I'm just here with some friends –" But that sounded a little too much like she was making herself available, didn't it? She didn't want to – well, she wouldn't have _minded_ , but she didn't mean to because he was married and that just wasn't anything she would ever do, not in a hundred years – but she had to say something, after all. "You know, Friday night out," she continued weakly, toying with the strap of her purse. "With the girls. Women." _Jesus._

The corner of his mouth ticked up in what Molly imagined could only be pain. "Right. Nice place for that. Sure." 

"Nicer if they'd serve you something every now and again," Molly muttered, putting herself up on her tiptoes and leaning over the bar, dropping back to her feet just in time to save her hair from swinging into the champagne flute at her side. She shoved it back behind her ear with an anxious glance at the woman clutching the glass in one thin, frigid-looking hand, but she hadn't been seen. And when she turned back to Greg she found – just for a moment – an actual smile, a certain lightness in the lift of his eyebrows, and a gaze that flickered immediately away from her face.

That comfortingly natural affect fled as soon as it had come, and his eyes were once again for the heavy velvet curtain swaying across the entryway. But when he spoke, his voice had lost some of the taut discomfort that had bound it up before. "I'm just here waiting for someone." 

Molly laughed. "Me, too." She jumped and gave a wave and finally found herself on the receiving end of the man with the wine list. Greg faded into her peripheral vision, but she was conscious of him nonetheless, eager to turn back around. She'd always liked him; he was sweet in the way that only a married man could be without making her feel like she had to go on the defensive, straightforward and patient and friendly. If he was a bit corny, at least it was always with a smile. And he was sexy, too, in that older way that was nice even if you _didn't_ have daddy issues, thank you very much, solid in the shoulders and a little rugged and soft in the right ways but most of all safe – safe, because the band on his finger meant he was unattainable and therefore a thoroughly harmless object for a silly little crush, a man she could look at and even laugh with without consequences. She liked that. It was so much easier than having to worry what people meant or what they wanted and whether, like Jim, they were hiding ulterior motives she hadn't even imagined.

She shivered; her right side prickled where the breeze from the just-opened door pushed up against her jumper. As she was leaning over to collect the second of four glasses of Viognier, she turned her head – Greg was moving away, his back a retreating plane of grey wool half obscuring the couple who had just come inside, who had stopped just past the threshold with blank, slightly stricken faces, a matched pair, a wary man and defiant woman. 

Molly threw her attention back to the glasses coming across the bar, her face suddenly too hot. Her elbow jostled the bottle Greg had left behind him, and it was only then she realized that it was almost entirely full.

\- - -

Greg left the cramped, file-cluttered office in a hurry, fleeing his guilt. It was one thing to recommend Sherlock Holmes to a colleague, a fellow detective who might genuinely benefit from his efforts if he could manage to swallow (and swallow, and swallow) his pride, but it was quite another to look a barrister in the eye and tell her that, yes, calling Mr. Holmes as an expert witness was the only thing to do; that he would have the answers she needed; that he was the man for the job. To be fair to himself, she was the one who’d suggested it – after hearing what an extensive and personal role Sherlock had played in the Met’s only investigation of Moriarty to date (well, only _known_ investigation) she had latched onto him as a much more likely source of colorful information than Greg could ever be.

He hadn’t mentioned how bloody _colorful_ Sherlock was likely to be on the stand, but he couldn’t possibly be the worst CPS had ever encountered.

Right?

Halfway through an about-face (he really ought to mention that bringing Sherlock into an office like that was a serious confidentiality risk) he was stopped in his tracks by the sight of a woman hunched over on one of the battered waiting sofas, a clipboard balanced on her knees – Molly Hooper. She was a different sort of sight, it was true, in grey wool trousers that seemed to hang a little too loose and a light pink buttoned shirt that left everything to the imagination except the tense arc of her shoulders, but the splash she’d made at Sherlock’s attempted Christmas party had never quite stopped ringing in his ears. It was impossible to see her now and not imagine – well, a little more skin, you know, the figure that he supposed was still there under that ill-fitting stuff. 

And that night in February, of course, when she’d appeared at his side and broken through the otherwise impenetrable tangle of anger and humiliation and hurt that had bound his attention to the expected arrival of his wife and her lover through that dark, curtained door. Molly hadn’t said much more than hello, but it had had a quieting effect on him. Thinking about it afterward – days later, after the tumultuous blur that was the twenty-four hour argument and the packing-up and moving house and getting absolutely blind drunk – he’d decided that it had just been nice to be reminded of the fact that not everyone who saw him saw the mess he trailed along behind him like a ship hauling an ocean’s worth of weed. Some people could say hello to him in bars; some people could look like they wanted to chat, even, oblivious to the storm he was walking through. There was nothing on his face that marked him for a fuck-up. Maybe Sherlock could have deduced that he was living in a bare little bedsit with the few things he’d bothered to bring still packed into a box, but … not everyone.

Of course, the pale shadow where his wedding ring had been for twenty years was pretty telling. 

“Hello,” he said, stopping at the other side of the low coffee table and straightening a bit in greeting, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders squared to take the stoop out of them and gain that extra inch, inch-and-a-half in height. “They grilling you, too, are they?”

Molly looked up at him with a greyish face and rather tight expression which she stretched after a moment into a chagrined smile. “Hello. Yes, I’m just – they want all kinds of stupid details. I don’t know why. They found him wearing the crown, for goodness’ sake.” 

“I just played stupid and told them to talk to Sherlock. Well – I didn’t have to do much playing. I never even saw the guy until they carried him out of the Tower.” He paused. “I don’t think.”

She nodded, her already half-hearted smile slipping into an awkward silence. When she broke it her voice was a little too bright. “So – how are you doing? I heard about the divorce. You’re all right?” It was hard to tell whether the sympathy was genuine or slathered on for the sake of conversation, but she sold it well, her eyes shining just the right way.

Or maybe that was just in his head. He did like her eyes. “Oh, yeah.” He waved his hand dismissively toward the door. “It’s all pretty clean. And it was a long time coming, anyway.” He’d never in a hundred years have told anyone it _wasn’t_ all right, but it wasn’t all bravado. He was, in some ways, more at peace now, if not actually happier. He always struggled for what to say to those polite questions, though. In fact, he was struggling for anything at all to say, which was rare for him to whom conversation usually came so easily, a veritable font of sincere and good-natured small-talk. He cleared his throat, reached up to rub uneasily at his hairline, and tried a crooked smile. “We sure know how to pick ‘em, don’t we?”

That was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. Her face went a splotchy red and her eyes fell immediately back to the paper in her lap. “I saw him all of three times.” There was a chill and a tremor in her voice that almost sent Greg a step backwards. “I didn’t _pick_ him, he lied to me.”

“No, of course. Sorry.” The wretched crack at a joke had fallen flat, and so did the apology, as far as he could tell. He watched her nod acknowledgement and shift in her spot on the sofa, and he wavered from one foot back to the other before he decided he’d better just get the hell out. “Good luck, anyway. I’ll see you around.”

“Thanks.” She glanced up at him one last time with that uncomfortable smile, the color still sharp in her cheeks. “Bye. See you.”

It was at the pub just down the street, over a dwindling plate of chips and chicken (all the sandwich plates and takeaway that had come into his life since losing his wife were going to start having a serious effect someday soon, he had recently reflected with some dread) that he began to imagine what it must have been like to discover that the man who’d asked you out for a round of drinks was a criminal mastermind, a bomber, a murderer, a villain. He’d never had any shortage of protective spirit, particularly where the female sex was concerned, but that was a situation calculated to stir up gallant feelings in anyone whose heart wasn’t carved out of wood, wasn’t it? He wondered whether she’d been scared; she hadn’t seemed it just now, but it had been a year ago that it had happened. His wife’s lying had left him a nervous wreck, and all she’d been doing behind his back was sleeping around – and around, and around – with what he could only suppose had been relatively normal men. To find out you’d been used in a scheme to blow someone to bits …

He wished he’d thought of that before sticking his foot in it, but that hadn’t ever been his strong suit.

The door opened and let in a dusty, slanting bar of evening sunlight just as he was resolving to apologize the next time he saw her, and he made his second stupid mistake that day: he looked up. There she was, small and hesitant in the doorway, her bag slouching over her shoulder as she scanned the room for someone – and landed on him in the process. Neither of them could very well pretend they hadn’t seen the other, and whoever she’d been seeking had not, apparently, arrived, because she gave a little wave and started over in his direction, looking something like a fawn in the headlights. 

“Hey again.” He raised his glass – his second pint, and more than half-full, an anchor that would keep him here for what seemed certain to be an awkwardly long time – in greeting.

She tugged a stool out from under the bar. “Do you mind? I’m meeting someone for dinner, but –“

“Sure, yeah. Have a seat. They let you out all right?” Her time at the prosecutor’s office probably wasn’t the best line of conversation, considering, but it offered plenty of material. At least he’d have _something_ to talk about, even if he did screw it up in the end.

“I think,” she said, straightening up after hanging her bag by her knees, “they realized I wasn’t very interesting. Which I’m not. I mean …” She smoothed her trousers nervously down her thighs. Her hands, he noticed, were steady, but restive. “I don’t know anything that can help them. Not really.”

Greg hid behind his glass for a moment, bracing himself with the beer and wishing it was something a little stronger. “No – neither do I. And I spent a good, solid week chasing him, so …” But self-deprecation wasn’t really the same as an apology, and he wasn’t going to feel quite right until he’d at least tried to make amends. It would have been better if a little more time had passed, but she seemed willing enough to forgive. “Look, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything about –“

“Mm – no,” she interrupted him immediately, placing her hand palm-down on the bar. When she looked up at him it was with an intensity that he hadn’t expected, a commanding, quiet sort of attention that he might have found charming had he not been so busy shutting up. “It’s all right. It was – he made a fool out of everyone, didn’t he? That’s what he does. He made me feel so …” Her gaze wandered down to the ring his glass had made just north of his napkin. “He made me feel so stupid. And I know I shouldn’t – well, I don’t anymore, but I should never have.” She shrugged. “That is - it's easy to say, isn't it.”

Nodding slowly, still not quite certain he shouldn’t insist, Greg nudged the remains of his sandwich around for a moment with a chip before sitting a bit more upright. “Well, he’s getting what’s coming to him now, isn’t he.”

“Maybe.” She didn’t sound nearly confident enough for his liking, and when she shuddered he very nearly joined her – but then she was waving down the bartender, and the decidedly uncomfortable thought of Moriarty sitting patiently in a jail cell was supplanted with a pleasant flashback of a cozy wine bar and a rather chattier Molly leaning over in a skirt that did much better things for her than this particular outfit. “Anyway,” she said, breaking into his reverie, “he gives me the creeps. Sorry. So you really told them they should call Sherlock as a witness? I guess they would have anyway, but …“

“But it’ll be one for the papers, for sure,” Greg finished for her, dry and without any discernible optimism. “I don’t feel too bad. They’d have got to him themselves eventually.”

“Well, I’m sure they’ll be able to coach him,” she began, but neither of them could let that pass without cracking up a bit, and by the time Greg had cleared the laugh out of his throat there was another young woman in the door, waving and heading for their spot at the bar.

He stood and pulled out his wallet, not keen on intruding or even sitting through introductions. “I’ve got to get back to work,” he said over her polite objections, tugging a card hurriedly out from behind his badge. “Look, if you ever need anything –“

“Thanks,” Molly murmured, taking it and tucking it into the hollow of her hand, a smile playing timidly around her lips, studiously avoiding the gaze of her friend (who was studiously occupying herself with fumbling in her bag). “Later, then.”

Greg left a few moments later after settling his bill, pushing out into the street in a somewhat better frame of mind than when he’d entered, entertaining the strange sensation that there was something promising about the skyline, the rooftops and the dwindling day coming together into an auspicious line that led somewhere a little brighter.

\- - -

The heavy grey plastic phone clattered back into its receiver and Molly stared, her face too warm and her pulse rushing, at the strange phone number spelled out on its blocky digital display. She'd been on the line for two minutes and thirty-seven seconds, apparently. It had felt like half an hour. The files stacked neatly on every side of her tiny, windowless office felt suddenly like an imminent avalanche. Her breath was coming short.

_Dr. Hooper, your handling of this particular death certificate has shown considerable irregularities._

_Surely you've never botched four straight toxicity screenings before, Dr. Hooper?_

_A four-week delay in issue for a simple suicide is quite unprecedented. How can you be certain, Dr. Hooper, that the highly unusual interference in this particular case has not been deliberate?_

Her font of excuses had run dry. Equipment malfunctions, inconclusive tests, more pressing cases, every variety of human error – for some reason they'd grown tired of it at last, and now it seemed impossible not to think that everything was going to come crashing around her. It wouldn't take much of an investigation, after all, to expose her fraud, and then she'd be right out of a job, and Sherlock …

Well, pull one thread and Sherlock's death would come unravelling like a tired old ribbon. She'd known it would happen eventually, they both had, but she'd hoped she'd have a little help when it did. And so far, Sherlock hadn't been in touch with her once since their final conference over Jim's cooling, grinning body. _It's a trust,_ he'd told her, scrolling unsteadily through the cracked screen of his phone she'd retrieved for him from the bloody rooftop. _It will pay out to Moriarty's men as soon as his executor has proof of my death – will you stop staring at him and pay attention? I need time, you have to buy me time._ His eyes had travelled off into the distance and something of his old, cocksure posture had stiffened him up again as he fidgeted thoughtfully with his damp hair. _Hold up the paperwork for as long as you can. We'll keep them hungry, off-balance. When they get their money they'll scatter, if it's as much as I expect it is. I can't have them disappearing. I need them vulnerable._ And then he'd looked at her for a strange, heavy second and told her it was _very important_ that she understand, and had disappeared. She'd wondered for less than an hour where he'd found all his information before the call from Sherlock's brother provided the only hint she needed.

He was the one she was to approach in a time of emergency. There was no one else she could trust, she'd been told, and as little as she'd like the easy, almost dismissive way he'd said it, she hardly felt she had any choice. She threw an anxious glance at her shut door and its collection of yellowing page-a-day calendar excerpts, and slipped her mobile out of her whitecoat.  
 The response came on the third ring. "Good afternoon, Dr. Hooper."

"Hi. Um, I've just – I've just had a call." She swallowed, her eyes fixed on her dusty keyboard. Her words were sticking in her dry throat like chaff. "From – from higher up. You know. They want – that is, they've noticed. How long it's taking, I mean. They were asking questions."

Silence – silence long enough that she'd opened her mouth to begin elaborating before it was broken.

"I see. Thank you," Mycroft replied, smooth and low as ever. "I hope –"

"I didn't know what to tell them –"

"I _hope_ ," he continued, speaking through her as though she'd been no more than a patch of static, "that you have a lovely weekend, Dr. Hooper. Good afternoon." The call ended.

Molly lifted her face to stare at her own washed-out reflection in her computer's dead monitor. _Good afternoon_ , was it? She didn't know whether to deflate or leap up and call him again – that wasn't enough, it was nowhere near enough when it was her job on the line and Sherlock's whole enterprise, whatever _that_ was – 

She'd wanted advice, she'd expected guidance, and all she'd received was _have a lovely weekend_. Fine – fine. It was Friday, it was half past three in the afternoon, and there was nothing she was going to accomplish here, not now that her heart was skipping around behind her ribs like a pebble in a tin. All she wanted to do was throw down her phone and rant, but she couldn't. There was no one to hear. 

But a month with Sherlock's secret had weighed her down, and if she didn't talk to someone, and talk to someone _now_ , her next step might drive her into the ground. 

So – she would find someone. She would _have a lovely weekend_ and pretend for as long as possible that Mycroft Holmes wasn't taking his sweet time salvaging her career. She struggled out of her coat, grabbed her purse from its place beneath her desk, and rushed out into the street, tipping her sunglasses down over her eyes before she'd even cleared the door. She was angry, and her choppy, accelerated stride took her into the amplified traffic of the Viaduct's overpass at a pace that was too quick for the stifling weather. There was sweat collecting on the back of her neck beneath where she'd tied her hair back by the time she had to stop at a corner, but still the waiting left her on edge. She felt she could walk the whole city and still have fuel to burn.

She dug through her purse for her phone and, dashing out into the street with an exasperated glance at the oncoming cars, dialed Greg.

Second ring, this time. "Hey." He sounded unabashedly pleased. That was nice.

"Hi," she said, slowing down not at all as a woman on a bicycle nearly took her head off with her outstretched arm. "Sorry, I know it's early – I'm not bothering you, am I?"

"No – no, just wrapping things up around the office. How are –"

"Do you want to get dinner?"

A bus chose that moment to tear by, its engine roaring into the adjacent alley and obliterating every sound but its sky-high rumble. It was only after three seconds of ringing silence that Molly realized it had buried more than the low-level bustle of the city.

She shut her eyes. "Sorry, I'm outside – I'm out on the street, I think I –"

"Dinner would be great, I said." There was a bit of a laugh at the edges of her voice, and she wasn't sure whether that made her want to grin or jump out in front of the _next_ bus. "Look, why don't I meet you around eight – is that all right? I'll text you where, I've got the address somewhere."

"Sure." A breeze swept the near-solid heat up off the asphalt and poured it around her. "Eight's perfect. I'll see you."

"Great." A pause; no barreling vehicles to break up the creeping awkwardness, this time. "Good. I'll see you then."

"Yep. – Bye!" She brought her phone down from her ear as though it had just turned into a snake, jabbing at _end_ with desperate ferocity. God. Why was that so hard? But it didn't matter – it didn't matter. She was going out tonight, and even though her problems would still be all her own (and Mycroft's, and Sherlock's) she would have someone to talk to, just _talk_ to for the first time in ages. She deserved that much, if her days as a doctor were numbered and she was just _this_ close to screwing up the one task she'd been left by a fugitive friend. She deserved a nice night.

Even if at the end she would probably find herself alone in bed, waiting to be jolted awake by the perfect and terrifying isolation that had made a habit of curling up on her chest like a spiteful cat.

\- - -

"And I just couldn't stay there," Molly was saying, slipping the bruised slice of cucumber back and forth along the lip of her glass. The ice had begun to peek through the liquid's turbid, lemon-yellow surface, and her professional guilt had risen up right on cue. "Chasing another – I don't know. Three hours of paperwork. I'll go in early on Monday." She washed that unhappy, meek assertion back down her throat with a little more gin. "You know how sometimes one thing can put you off the track, like … One phone call, and you're finished. It's too much. It's silly, I guess."

"I'm all right with phone calls." Everything in Greg's posture was sympathetic. He was turned toward her, his wrist propped on the bar beside his tall, half-empty glass; his knee was an inch from the light green cotton that draped over hers. The little curl of fear she'd felt in her middle the last time they'd been this close had dissipated, although perhaps not much had changed. Touching someone then had seemed like such a bad idea, but now … 

"It's the walk-ins," he continued, "that I can't stand. Do you get those? The guy who can't get it through his head that popping by at the end of the day isn't going to make his stuff come any faster. You get the feeling people think you're some sort of idiot kid, looking over your shoulder every chance they get." He ran his thumb absently along the line of his jaw; he'd clearly shaven right before he'd stepped out. "And it's a hell of a lot harder to blame the phone connection when you have to physically grab someone by the collar and put him out on his ear."

Molly's smile spread a little further. "I don't know – I think I could throw someone out of my office before I could hang up on my boss." 

"Oh, you'll get the hang of it." His grin disappeared for a second behind his drink. "It just takes practice. Cutting out at three-thirty in the afternoon's a pretty good beginner's step."

She sighed, swinging her foot back to hook the heel of her sandal over the rung of her barstool. "Maybe." She wished she could tell him why – and then the fear came back, starting up again like the first indescribable signs of a wave of nausea. She couldn't tell him; and yet, he would find out. Sherlock meant to come back, and when he did, she doubted he'd go to great lengths to hide her involvement from anyone but the authorities. God knew he'd tell John, and Greg would undoubtedly ask, and what would she do then? She didn't regret it, she wasn't really _sorry_ , but no one liked a lie. What was the point of any of this if it was set to go off a cliff the second Sherlock showed his face again? 

But there, again – she was dragging problems up out of the muck before they were ready to surface. A lot of things could happen between now and whenever Sherlock decided he was ready to come back to the real world; none of them had happened yet. There was nothing wrong with taking advantage of the peace. Was there? She was just having dinner. That was all it was. That was all it really had to be. 

"I just wish," she continued, letting the cucumber alone before she tore it in half, "that it didn't always have to be – all these stupid little side battles. I've got a job to do already, without …" Her shoulders hunched together, an aborted shrug. 

“There’s always politics.” Greg’s pronunciation of it the word was as disdainful as possible – a tone that didn’t really suit him, and that slipped away immediately afterward. “I’m no good at it, and I wouldn’t want to be. The kind of people who end up on top of the ladder aren’t exactly the kind I wanted to be when I grew up, you know?”

“When I grew up,” Molly said, lifting her drink, “I wanted to be a zookeeper.”

Ten ice-crunching minutes later and they still didn’t have a table; Greg had taken to glancing over his shoulder with a sour little twist to his mouth every couple minutes to search for the hostess. It was sweet. But the crowd showed no sign of thinning, and whatever respect this restaurant was accustomed to pay to reservations had apparently been overridden by the weather, perfect as it was for lingering on the broad, bright patio. Molly’s suggestion that they grab some takeaway and find a bench in the park was met with embarrassed agreement, and after atoning for his imprudent choice in establishments by picking up the tab for the cocktails, Greg ushered her out into the busy street.

“I know a place, actually.” He stopped right at the corner and hailed a cab. “Really,” he added with a dry little smile when she gave him a skeptically teasing glance. 

They were lucky; a car pulled up half a moment later, and Molly hopped in, glad to be off her feet after even that short a time. She wasn’t exactly wobbling on her heels, but they were hardly up to her daily standard of comfort. She slid across the seat to make room, checking her lipstick discreetly in the glass of her window, which was reflective enough to reveal a minor imperfection in her makeup but not to warn her about the elbow suddenly wedged against her side, or Greg’s weight shoving her up against the door, or the second man diving into the cab behind them, breathless and pale and wild.

_”Drive!”_ Sherlock shouted at the bewildered cabbie, and they lurched forward as Greg gawked and Molly held her breath and resisted the urge to slap her hands over her ears. “No – no, get down!”

And then the back window blew out. Molly dove forward into the footwell, assisted by their short, screeching stop, and felt Greg’s hand wide and flat on her back; the front door flew open and the quick, sharp slap of soles on the pavement was, she supposed, the last they would hear of their driver; there was a rush of hot air and she looked up, terrified that she’d find herself alone in the middle of this mess, but Sherlock had flung the door open and was firing a handgun over the of the frame. “Inspector.” His voice lifted slightly in expectation, but was maddeningly calm – but then, there really wasn’t time to be driven mad just yet, Molly reflected, and apparently Greg felt the same way, jumping out and darting around into the driver’s seat, slamming the door, and tearing off into the frantic intersection before Sherlock had even tumbled back in. When Sherlock did finally get the door shut, he joined Molly on the floor, crouching and bracing himself against the seat with one hand.

“D---- Lane, thank you very much. Hello, Molly.”

Molly let out a belated squeak.

“Where the _hell_ is D---- Lane? – Jesus!” Another gunshot rang out; the bullet was wide, but it shattered the right side mirror.

“North!” Molly yelled. “Go north, keep going!”

“We should have let you drive,” Sherlock sighed, peering carefully up past the back seat, gun still in hand. “You’re the only one they don’t want dead, after all –“

Greg twisted round in his seat. “What –“

“Watch the road!” Sherlock snapped, sending him right back round again. “None of this would have happened if you’d kept to a reasonable schedule. I should have known I couldn’t trust either of you to keep a dinner date going for more than half an hour. Did you run out things to talk about? I was afraid that might happen –”

Molly brought her clutch down hard on his shoulder. “What are you _doing_?” She wished she didn’t sound so shrill, but she was terrified, she was being shot at, and he was just balanced there cool as you please. At least the blow made him totter a little on his heels.

"Deterring your kidnappers," he spat. "And you're very welcome, too."

"My what?"

"A right here, Lestrade. They _were_ planning on kidnapping you," he continued, turning his attention back to Molly and slamming back against the door as they took a hard, wild turn. "Now they know I'm alive I expect they'll settle for shooting me in the head. And wouldn't say no to bagging the Inspector, here, just in case. We'll need to ditch the car; they were set up on foot, but it won't take them long to get mobile."

"I went to your funeral," Greg murmured from the front. Molly could see his hands standing out white and rigid against the steering wheel. 

"I should think you'd be used to being a step or two behind by now – I said _watch the road_!"

There was nothing, after that – nothing but Sherlock's directions, barked out at short notice and obeyed without question. Molly felt sick, lightheaded. Sherlock was back and things were more dire than ever, her heart was higher in her throat than it had been since she'd started signing her name to his autopsy files. And Greg … Well, it wasn't Greg so much as it was _everyone_ , everyone but Mycroft, all the people to whom she'd been forced to lie. Her fear that she'd slip up and expose Sherlock was suddenly shifted, twisted back on herself – would he expose her? The thought of facing John Watson was enough to make her want to pack up and leave town. When the car skidded to a halt in the mouth of an unfamiliar alley and she was waved into the deepening evening shadows like some kind of soldier under fire she simply followed, leaving her shoes behind in the interest of speed and making it a solid thirty paces before running afoul of a shattered bottle. The lancing pain in the sole of her foot snapped her out of the deathly slow, suffocating fugue that her fear had wrapped her in, and the sounds of sirens, of revving engines and raised voices descended on her like a burst of cold from a hilltop. 

_Hurry_ , Sherlock was saying, in his low, urgent voice, and Greg was glancing between them like some concerned sheepdog, counting and counting his herd and hoping it came to the same total every time. It wasn't until they'd scrambled past an old, clanging metal door and into an ancient concrete staircase, dark but for the week and greenish emergency lighting, that anyone spoke.

Greg was breathless, lagging behind with Molly at least as much from the apparent stitch in his side as from any kind of chivalry. "How," he gasped at Sherlock, "how did you –"

But Sherlock's phone rang, deafening in the bare hallway, and he only silenced it with a contemptuous sniff. "That will be Mycroft. You've gone off the timetable – he'll be wonderfully irritated. But unless he's managed to make a mess of things, too, there ought to be … ah. Yes."

Another door opened, letting in the relatively wholesome grey of twilight. There was a car, battered and unassuming, and Molly had never seen anything quite so wonderful in her life. She piled in and raised her bleeding foot into her lap to inspect it, resisting the urge to knead at it, and off they went, the three of them and the faceless driver, down a much more peaceful road to a part of the city she had no interest whatsoever in identifying. All she really wanted was to feel safe, and that was going to require four walls.

"You've been gone a month," Greg said at last, when the only sound was the clumsy buzz of the car and the impatient noises Sherlock always made over his phone. "We thought you were dead."

"I didn't have a choice," Sherlock snapped. The words hung between them, cold and too heavy, until even he seemed to concede that they required elaboration. "Moriarty – isn't it obvious? He would have had you killed – among other people – if I hadn't died, if I hadn't seemed to be dead. That was the deal he made – you, or me." 

"So now he's after –"

"He's dead." There was more impatience in his voice than Molly could remember hearing, and she wondered whether that meant he was reserving some of it for himself. "He set it up before he died – it was simple. Everything he did at the end," he said, strangely bitter, "was simple. Money makes the world go round, doesn't it? He set up a pay-off – his gunmen would get their cash once my death was official, or, if I should escape, upon the deaths of a few other select individuals. It was the same trick he played the last time." He gave a quiet, peevish snort. "The very same. He never knew the definition of a conventional weapon – it was all nuclear from the beginning. My _friends_."

"So they were trying to kill me." Greg was bent forward in the passenger seat; from her angle Molly could see him wringing his hands slowly between his knees, studying them with an exhaustion that more than anything looked lost.

She wished they would stop talking about this. She didn't want to sit and listen as the details led back to her - they'd been gunning for her, she was sure of it, the phone call had been no coincidence – but it wasn't as though she could object.

"Yes," Sherlock confirmed, glossing easily over the complications of the truth. "Yes, I'm afraid they were getting a bit testy. I've been having Mycroft hold up the paperwork, you see – without the death certificate, Moriarty's man wasn't about to hand over the goods. I knew if I kept the prize out of their reach long enough, they'd get impatient and go for Plan B – you, that is. Three would-be murderers, thirsting for their millions and deprived of their prey ... I knew they'd get sloppy. Greed and impatience are a little stupidity are the ideal conditions for a slip-up. We just had to wait for them to show their hand – Mycroft and I – and they did, today. They were moving in for the kill, you see, but we were a step ahead of them. I had my net ready to close at the perfect moment, and had you had the decency to _wait_ for that perfect moment before traipsing out into the street –"

"But you said they were kidnappers." Greg's eyes sought Sherlock's in the rear view mirror. As far as Molly could see he was simply confused, not accusatory, but with the weight of her secret hanging over her such innocence seemed completely impossible. "That they didn't want to kill her."

Sherlock glanced discreetly at Molly, the whites of his eyes flickering in his downturned face that was illuminated only by the light of his phone. "Naturally, a friend of mine with access to a mortuary and all of its attendant records would be of more use alive to them than dead."

That carried them in silence to the middle of a dark street full of low, unremarkable houses. After a few minutes of interminable waiting for the all-clear they trudged up one of the short sets of front steps and, finally, into the house that Molly dared to hope was her final destination of the evening.

It was dusty, dark and hardly furnished at all; a sofa, a double mattress on the floor, and a small kitchen tucked away in the corner were the only amenities in evidence. A heavily padlocked door which must have led to the stairway had clearly remained unopened for years. "One of Mycroft's," Sherlock explained, tugging aside the drapes to reveal a hidden iron grating over the windows and a second set of black-out curtains to conceal those safeguards from the view of the street. "Well – not his, exactly. I doubt he'd come within a mile of this place without a surgical mask and a pair of gloves. You really can't beat seniority, can you?"

"Are we sleeping here?" Molly asked, not bothering at all to hide the hope in her voice.

Sherlock nodded, something in his face clouding. "Yes. You are, yes. I have to go –" His mouth shut and opened again, worked restlessly as he turned on his heel to inspect the locks on the door. "I have to go see someone, I shouldn't have waited this long, really …"

But still his hand hung on the latch, hesitant and, Molly thought, perhaps even a little afraid. There was no doubt in her mind about who his next visit would be.

"Goodnight, then," Greg said after a lengthy and heavy silence, a prompt as much as a pleasantry. 

"Right – yes, goodnight. You'll find everything you need here, you can –" Sherlock shook his head as though shaking off his own sudden awkwardness. "You'll be fine. I'll have someone stop by tomorrow. _Don't_ answer the door until you've heard from me." And with that he went out into the night, managing to look almost brave about it.

The silence dragged on for three seconds, four, and Molly found herself tempted to succumb to her usual hatred of oppressive stillness – but she couldn't trust herself to try to fill up the emptiness without giving away too much. She could feel her face reddening. "I have to –"

"You're bleeding," Greg pointed out in the same moment, looking stiff and miserable standing beside the completely unappealing couch. "Do you –"

"Yes, I'll go clean up, it's – I'll be all right." She gave him what she could only imagine was a thoroughly unconvincing smile, and flew to the narrow rickety door that led to the bathroom. There was a stock of supplies under the sink that obviously received more attention than the dusting, and she took out a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a roll of white tape, and a few packs of cotton before surveying the rest of her surroundings.

There was an indelible veneer of grime in the shell of the tub that reminded her of tobacco stains and which inspired little confidence, but Molly perched herself on the edge and dropped her feet in, tugging her skirt up and holding the bottle between her knees. She wrenched the sticky faucet handle to the side and the water poured out in an uncontrolled, lukewarm rush; the dull stinging at her instep flared up and made her toes curl. But the thought of whatever had taken up residence beneath her skin was much, much more menacing than a little stabbing pain, and after rinsing off the black mélange of London streets and putting a little ill-deserved faith into the worn-down sliver of soap in the dish she soaked a band of the cotton in alcohol and applied it without mercy. The only cut of any real significance was on her right, but out of a natural sense of tidiness or perhaps just an excess of caution she went at the scrapes and nicks on her left, as well.

The temptation to fill the tub and just let her feet soak for the rest of the evening was almost overpowering, and had the bathroom presented itself a little better she might have. But she'd just have to wait until she was back in her own flat –

And when would that be? Sherlock hadn't mentioned, she realized with a flutter of dread. There were men trying to kidnap her and she couldn't leave until they'd stopped, but when would they? It had taken a month for things to advance even this far, and now …

Her hands shook a little as she tugged another strip of gauze out of the package and began winding it around her injured foot. Scrutiny from her supervisors seemed a damned silly reason to worry now that she might not be able to show up for work on Monday or for the foreseeable future. Had she and Sherlock just traded places? Was she going to be stuck here in this miserable little hole sleeping on the floor and waiting for a knock at the door? She didn't want to, she _wanted_ to go home, she'd done her part and she would do it again but this … this was too much. 

There was a shuffling sound just outside, and then a tentative rap that sent the door creaking forward a couple of inches. Molly quickly set the bottle in the tub and smoothed her skirt down over her knees. "Yes?" The tremor in her voice made her cringe. It was time to get a grip.

Greg's head appeared around the door, the soft grey of his hair reflected dimly in the smudged medicine cabinet mirror. "Hey. All right?" He was clutching the edge of the door as though it were a shield. "Do you need anything?"

"No. Um." She cleared her throat and pulled a small, tight smile, tugging her fingers through the sweat-tangled hair that had fallen over her forehead. "I'm fine, thanks. Just – well, as fine as you can be. After running barefoot through all of that."

"Yeah, no joke," he murmured, his gaze traveling down to her tattered feet and the spent gauze on the chipped tile floor. "I might have just thrown my hands up and let them have me."

She laughed, a weak little outburst that was at least half hopelessness. It probably shouldn't have been funny, because they'd just been shot at, but he was trying, and that was sweet – and she did feel better, she supposed, knowing he was here. If she was stuck, at least she wasn't stuck on her own. That wasn't a very charitable way of thinking, maybe, but after a tightly-wound month of maddening loneliness, it was a relief that she couldn’t deny. It set off a physical slackening, actually; it quite literally settled her stomach.

Taking in a deep breath, she set her hands on her thighs and twisted around to face him. "Actually," she said, giving him an apologetic little frown, "I'm really hungry." She was ready for dinner, now. She'd gone out for dinner and she was going to have it; this was supposed to have been her night, so she could start worrying tomorrow. Or try, at the very least.

"Right." His face went a bit blank, but he rallied, trying a chary smile. "No, me too. Sure, I'll see what I can do." And after giving the door another quiet knock, he disappeared.

By the time she'd straightened herself up a little, shoved all the supplies back into the cupboard, and limped over to the tiny corner kitchenette, there was an old, thin steel pot on the hob giving off steam. Greg was staring into the open refrigerator with his arms crossed over his chest and a decidedly skeptical twist to his lips. 

"Any luck?" She hobbled over to the counter and hoisted herself up onto it, letting her feet hang down in front of the crooked cupboard doors. Standing was far too much work at the moment.

Swinging the door shut, he shook his head and wrinkled his nose a bit. "Not much. I don't trust anything in there – God knows the last time anyone did any shopping. But there's some pasta." He lifted the opened box of spaghetti that sat beside the stove and rattled it with a self-satisfied smile that was nice, really, the way a child making breakfast might have been. "And a tin of tomatoes, and a few packs of salt. And that's probably the best we're going to do."

"I'm not going to be choosey." Still, when he turned to clap the lid back on the pot, she glanced behind her and opened one of the cupboards to see if she couldn't find anything more appealing – and, lo and behold, came out with most of a bottle of gin. Interesting priorities, these friends of Mycroft's. Greg's open admiration when he turned again to find her clutching it to her chest was enough to make her laugh – and to laugh too loud, the sudden loosening of tension in her throat threatening to let out a little too much.

He didn't seem to mind, however; in fact, a very little of the cheerful energy that had charged his face only a few hours ago began to make a return. "Am I glad to see that." He began opening and digging through the rest of the cupboards and, apparently satisfied that a pair of mugs was all he was going to find in the way of glasses, set them on the counter and went right back to the refrigerator to produce – with much gravity – an old bottle of lime juice, its label peeled away from the greasy-looking glass.

Molly quirked an eyebrow at it.

"Well, what do you think?" He unscrewed the cap and stared down into it. "Are you feeling lucky?"

"You've got to be joking."

"Hey, things aren't about to get any worse." Some of the jauntiness bled out of him again, though, as he tapped the juice into the mugs. "Well – I don't mean that. You don't get a friend back from the dead every day, do you. Just …"

"I know." And for a moment she felt fake again – but why should she? The realization came to her abruptly, as clear as the relief etched in the lines of Greg's face alongside all the fatigue and confusion. It was like Sherlock had said: this was, in the end, the same trick Jim had always played. He'd made her ashamed, once, had made her feel like the world's biggest idiot for falling for his stupid act; he was making her feel guilty now, even from beyond the grave pulling his miserable strings and cutting her off from what she could have, what she deserved. None of this was her doing. She hadn't had a choice, even less than Sherlock had – well, she could have told him _no_. But she hadn't – she'd helped him. She'd done her piece, she'd done it well, and her reward was _not_ going to be fretting over the secrets she'd kept when she'd kept them to keep a man alive. She would tell Greg someday, maybe even soon; she'd tell them all, and she wouldn't shrink from doing it, either. She had no reason to. The man who bore all the blame was dead, and she would heap it on his grave until she was bloody well free of it.

But tonight all she wanted was dinner.

When he handed her her makeshift gimlet she grinned, trying to suppress it purely out of habit and succeeding only in limiting herself to a rather impish little smile. She liked the way it made her feel, the unexpected release from obligation – it was a little addictive. Why should she hide anything at all? "I'm glad you're here," she said when he touched his mug to hers, letting it out with the force and urgency of a confidence. 

"And if it weren't for you," Greg replied, letting his hand settle on the counter a few inches away from her thigh, "I'd never have found the gin. Cheers."

They drank; she felt the last, lashing edges of the evening's adrenaline rush lapping inside of her; and when he made to turn back to the stove to start boiling their dinner she gripped the front of his shirt and leaned up to kiss him instead, her bare knee nudging against his hip, her ribcage expanding with an easy pleasure into the large, warm hand pressed suddenly against her side. When dinner, such as it was, was finally ready, she let him grip her waist and help her down to the floor once again, where she landed steadily on her good foot.

\- - -

Greg woke to complete darkness. His first instinct was to roll over and reach for his phone, which was always kept on the side table at the head of his bed; but as he drew in a long, unhurried breath, the night came back to him in the smell of dust and tomato sauce and the warm, insistent pressure at his side – the safehouse, dinner, Molly Hooper.

And if that hadn't been enough, his back reminded him the moment he sat up that he'd essentially slept on a loose collection of old and vindictive springs. He stood carefully, trying to work out the weird twists his clothes had got themselves into overnight. They'd fallen asleep talking – and judging by the clatter when he tried to make his way to the kitchen counter where he thought he might have left his phone, they hadn't had the energy to clean up. That was no surprise. He'd crashed hard, worn from all the shock and peril, and she must have done the same. That they'd managed to put together a meal of sorts was amazing, in retrospect. Molly must have walked – well, more like run – two miles on a foot that had by dinnertime seen her stumbling across the room on his arm, and he wasn't exactly in sprinting shape himself. Add Sherlock onto that, Sherlock who was inexplicably and wonderfully alive, and it was a wonder they'd had any life left for conversation. 

He was glad they had. He knew enough about himself to know he could be easily smitten, easily swept away by a rush of affection – but Molly was sweet, Molly was funny, and Molly was _impressive_ , and as much as the thought of keeping her safe awakened in him the usual swelling sentiment, there was something else there, something that made him stop and look and pay attention.

Not a man overly given to introspection, he wasn't quite sure what it was, yet – and likely wouldn't delve too deeply into his own thoughts to find out. He preferred to feel his way, finding his assessments more trustworthy when taken by hand, as it were, than when formed in words or fleeting ideas. Time was always what he needed, time and experience: whether it was on a case or simply sailing into a new acquaintance, his best allies were his instincts and his patience. And even though he wasn't displaying either to best advantage while groping among the dishes for his damned phone, they generally served him very well.

"What time is it?" Molly's voice came soft and muffled from the direction of the bed. He felt a little badly for waking her, but – well, not really. He'd never liked being alone. 

"I'll tell you when I find my – here. It's … a bit past seven." The light from the screen made him squint, but at least he could find his way back without splattering any more of their cold, congealed dinner on the scraped wooden floors.

She sighed; he could see the vague grey outline of her shoulders slump back down onto the mattress. "Oh, good. I don't want to get up."

"Who said anything about getting up?" He sat again, letting his feet slip under the thin blanket they'd shared. "I don't think you have any appointments today, Dr. Hooper."

"I'd better not." She tugged at the tail of his shirt and he was grateful for the dark that covered his decidedly undignified smile. "They can try to come knocking, I don't care. I'm about finished running away from people."

"I know I am. I can barely walk."

"So lie down."

He didn't see fit to argue. Stretching out onto his side into a position that minimized the number of steel spikes driving into him and allowed his back to relax into a relatively dull ache, he slid his hand along the thin stretch of mattress between them, feeling his way along the contours of the bed and her body until he found her shoulder. His sense of touch was heightened slightly in the dark, and the scratch of the blanket, the soft curve underneath, the simple rise and fall of all of it made him smile, grounded and sure and comfortable – but there was something new and as yet unseen here, too, he could tell, something he would only discover slowly, as was his wont, that would wait for the proper moment to reveal itself, giving him in the meantime something that to him was just as gratifying – the joy of the wait.


End file.
